[split] Authority and the Appeal to it.

[eggyk]

the expert in this case is someone that has spent time sitting through thousands of manuscripts over years

But she sat through only one Voynich Manuscript in her entire career, right? 

And don't forget that there was another expert who examined the VMS and claimed that all the text and drawings were a single hand.

All the best, --stolfi

This feels like it is straying into "don't trust experts" as a general idea, but each expert uses different methods and evidence to come to their claims. So to dismiss one expert opinion because another expert opinion was once wrong is itself a claim to.. anti-authority? 

We should be saying "this expert was wrong because x, y, z" and "this expert was correct because x, y, z". You can't just base your judgement on the fact that they are considered an expert. 

As for appealing to authority, the same applies generally in my opinion. If you disagree with the substance of what experts say, that's fine. Disagreements are the basis of reasonable science and debate; science is effectively a long line of experts that were once considered correct but ultimately proven wrong. If people then argue against your anti-status-quo stance with a blanket appeal to authority, they are not arguing in a reasonable way.